Zoroastrianism’s Towers of Silence
When we think of traditional Christian practices of worship, we very often center those thoughts around opposing binaries. Good and evil, Heaven and Hell, light and dark, them (or Him) and us, the worshipped and the worshippers. And while modern day Christianity draws much influence from Judaism, premodern Jewish belief didn’t include notions of Satan, or personified evil in the world. And similar concepts of baptism, messiah, and the influence and lineage of symbols such as guardian angels or eternal flames can be drawn more concretely further back to Zoroastrianism.
Zoroastrianism’s central premise, the message given to its founding prophet Zoroaster by the god Ahura Mazda is that human beings have been separated from the light of the divine. That through Zoroastrian practice and ritual, and a life well lived according to teachings of texts in the Zend Avesta, humans would return to the light by joining the fight against the world’s evils. And while this has influence upon Christianity, the specific agency of humans, the necessity of humans in this fight, is a key difference.
The binary of good and evil, between the Druj embodied by the Satan figure of Angra Mainyu and the Asha, or good embodied by Ahura Mazda, places humans in the limbic space between, torn and pulled through life between the two extremes. This is not the case in Abrahamic faiths, where God is all powerful, and in many ways, we know how the story ends before it’s even begun. In Christian faith, God is all powerful, but Ahura Mazda, while powerful, needs humans to create the favorable outcome where Asha triumphs over Druj. So what results is an uncertain outcome, placed upon the agency of the individual, not the dispensability of the worshipper. We must act favorably in Zoroastrian practice, not simply be subservient to the higher divine power.
Zoroastrians fight the battle in three main ways. Through good thought (humata), good word (hukta), and good deeds (havarshta), which in principle is very close to the Christian communal practice of ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ which we find in both Luke 6.31 and Matthew 7.12 in The Bible. By practicing good thought, speaking truth, and helping others, we weaponize our behavior in the service of Ahura Mazda’s fight. These concepts aren’t unique to Zoroastrianism of course, but their outcomes are. We may do these same things in the Catholic faith for example, but we do them for reasons of redemption, cleansing, and to assure us a place in Heaven when we die. Arguably Catholics don’t do these things as weaponized behavior against Satan because they already know that God will and has defeated him. The Zoroastrian fight is ongoing, and humans still have agency in determining what happens in the finish. It's an empowering sense of service, but places great responsibility upon those who practice. It gives them a reason to fight.
But when an individual’s fight is over upon death, and their soul is reunited in Heaven with Ahura Mazda, what remains must still be treated with purity and good intent towards the earth. Minimizing impact and pollution, practiced by one of the oldest religions in the world, is a highly contemporary and strongly present ecological idea. It’s an idea which serves to protect not just worshippers, but the very planet itself. The notion of sky burial, and the rituals of the Towers of Silence, where one’s corpse is carried off by the birds, exists in strong opposition to the Christian ritual of burial. Zoroastrians are carried off in pieces up into the sky by the birds, Christians are eaten by the worms in the ground. And while sky burial may seem barbarous by western practice and perception, there is a genuine poetic beauty to it which is in sharp contrast to both the ecological impact of spiritual practices of Christian cultures.
So while Zoroastrianism may be small in size, it is enormous in influence, and empowers the agency of its followers with paramount importance in the fight between good and evil, and in doing so gives them the ultimate responsibility of faith in determining the outcome of such an eternal battle.
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